Pictures of the CMS Awards

Camera found, and in other words: pictures found of our team at the CMS Awards 🙂

On the first picture my former boss Rudy Raymaekers behind our crystal trophee (quite a sight, don’t you think ;-), on the second our marketing ‘engin’ Engin with the Belgian champagne we won. On the third picture you see me, moderator Eef and webmaster David being creative with our spoons and on the fourth one Eef and I with our certificate 🙂 More pictures via this Flickr-link.

HasseltLokaal wins silver (and champagne) at cms awards

Yeaaaaaah 🙂 HasseltLokaal got silver at the second edition of the cms awards. The prizes are given annually to European websites that stand out in either search engin optimization, web 2.0, navigation, design, government or content. A profesional jury chooses the best three in each category.

It was quite unexpected to be honest. A while ago, I applied for the awards in the category content, but never thought it would turn out so well. Till I got a phone call on Monday that we should really be present at the awards on Tuesday…Why was our presence so important? And then it started to dawn.

So I started calling my colleagues and we went there. Why HasseltLokaal has been chosen, is not entirely clear. Everybody was in a rush because there was quite some delay. In other words: everybody was hungry and didn’t feel like long speeches. At any case, the journalist of Het Belang van Limburg who interviewed me today did get the explanation from the organization. So tomorrow we will read it in the newspaper 😉 I’ll post some pictures soon, but at the moment we don’t know where our camera has gone…

Curious what I wrote in the application form? Here the answer on the following (and most important) question on the form:

Why do you think your website should win this competition? Express the strong points and differentiators? (max. 25 lines) 

Thé strong point of www.HasseltLokaal.be is that we have given our platform to the community, from the beginning on. The project is in other words not a traditional publishing project, but a platform with news about the people of Hasselt, from the people of Hasselt. 

Every citizen (of Hasselt) can easily publish content (articles, photos, videos), react on an article or place an activity of its society on the calendar. Are they looking for something, then they can put a wanted ad on www.HasseltLokaal.be. The community puts their fellow citizens in the picture. Not the ‘usual celebrities’, but the people and organizations of Hasselt itself. Citizens know way better than any journalist what is going on in their neighbourhood or town. They make news with their hearts. Therefore, the entries on the platform are usually very interesting, new, honest, creative and as such, the people of Hasselt keep coming back to the platform. A weekly news letter keeps citizens of Hasselt up-to-date about events in Hasselt and the most popular articles.  

The HasseltLokaal platform has been able to combine the strenghts of a traditional media company and of the ‘public’ (that is no longer a public within our project).  Professional journalists check entries on a moderation platform before they appear online. They advise and teach the so-called citizen reporters if needed. The quality of the content is in that way guaranteed.  The upload and moderation tool as well as the website have been developed with the help and tips of the community. In that way, they are very user friendly and efficient amd make it very easy to create and moderate the content. 

By giving the HasseltLokaal-platform to the community and by constantly experimenting and trying out new things thanks to that community, www.HasseltLokaal.be is the ‘living’ proof a community shaping their local lives on a virtual platform.